Whether you like to sketch, illustrate, design or doodle, organisers of The Big Draw are inviting people of all ages, talents and backgrounds to get involved in hundreds of events taking place across the UK over the coming month.

This year’s theme has been declared as 2012 in lines. The packed programme will launch with a day of drawing at the V&A featuring special guest illustrators Quentin Blake, Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, Gerald Scarfe and Richard Seymour.

“Our aim is to show that drawing is a vital tool for learning, thinking, creating and communicating. Best of all, it’s accessible and at the end of our fingertips.”

The line up for this year includes a chance to leave a chalk etching on the Castleyard paving stones in Oxford, embark on an artist-led tour around Manchester while sketching your journey on an umbrella and create Picasso-inspired fans, magazines and jewellery in Scotland.

The drawing activities on offer have been inspired by the Museum’s collections, meaning you can help to decorate paper dinner wear in the ceramics gallery, design a table runner based on Tudor tapestries or try your hand at costume illustration in the midst of the fashion exhibition.

Head to the drawing exchange for the chance to swap your design with someone else’s masterpiece, root for your favourite newspaper doodler in Battle of the Cartoonists or join the V&A sketch mob on a drawing tour taking in museum highlights.

Scarborough parents who have spent years trying to discourage their children from drawing on the walls are about to find their hard work undone.

This Big Draw project invites children to scribble directly on to the gallery walls in order to create a large-scale artwork using Posca pens. Each child will be asked to draw an individual motif to represent themselves and the resulting mural will be then go on display at the Scarborough site.

Join a group of working artists for drawing classes in the impressionist and modern art galleries of National Museum Cardiff.

Brendan Stuart Burns invites you to make a 3-D drawing installation in response to music in the grand hall, Laura Ford will help you create an individual visual narrative inspired by surrealism, and Stephen West asks you to respond to sculptures by Epstein, Gill and Gaudier-Brzeska with primitive-style drawings.

In collaboration with Colchester United FC and Colchester Community Sports Trust, firstsite Associate Artists Lawrence Bradby and Jevan Watkins Jones invite spectators to capture the rhythm and excitement of a football game using pencil and paper.

The drawing project will take place over three match fixtures at Colchester United FC, the first is on 29 September.